Nightmares
by BloodiedCoreOfHope
Summary: Ran really should have expected Conan to get nightmares, considering all the corpses he trips over. Conan's just too stubborn to accept her help when it comes down to it, but it really helps solidify the not Shinichi theory for Ran. Shinichi's too strong to let nightmares get to him, but Conan's just a kid after all. /Just Ran monologuing/ /Disclaimer: I own nothing but the idea./


Sometimes, I can't get to sleep. It can be annoying to deal with, certainly, and for a long while- since I was a kid, I would have just stared at the ceiling and thought of nothing. As I grew up those long nights, when they came, were spent thinking about my friends, and studying. Recently, though, in my second year of high school one of them disappeared. I had gone on a date with them the day they disappeared, and although he still calls me occasionally I think he's forgotten about us. About everyone he's left behind.

Still, that isn't really what I'm here to talk about. It's about the person- no, child, who appeared the day he disappeared. In some ways, it's startling how similar the two are. They're distant relatives but they look exactly alike- apart from the fact that this one's 10 years younger of course. They're both mystery freaks, they both barely even register wearing suits as abnormal, and most of all they're both plagued by corpses.

The few times that guy showed up he still stumbled over bodies, so I'm half convinced the curse runs in the family but only he and the kid, Conan, were unlucky enough to get it. The kid's only six but because of family circumstances in the Edogawa family- it seems like he's been dumped with myself and my father. Those circumstances I'm not certain of, but it's probably something to do with the stress of constantly running into corpses. I don't blame them really. It gets tiring.

I think Shinichi's old enough now to just grin and bear it, as freaky as that seems. He was barely phased by a decapitation on a roller coaster we went on- on our date. He just went into work mode, blank as a piece of paper, filling in details on the way to form a conclusion and catch a criminal. Said criminal turned out to be a gymnast using her necklace to behead someone a few rows behind her. Creepy and disturbing, definitely, I was shaken by it, but Shinichi just… Moved on. He even said it's best to forget about these things. I didn't get it then, but I think I do now.

Since Conan moved in with us it's been death nonstop. Going on holiday? Make sure you don't take a plane- it'll be a locked room. Going shopping? Uh oh- someone strangled to death with their own carrier bag. Going to a magic show? death defying trick gone wrong! It only took me about a month to stop thinking of the victims as people with family, and hit that clinical mindset, but Conan…

He's only seven but he's been surrounded by death his whole life from what I can gather. Sometimes, on those long nights when I can't sleep he's there with me. He's always quiet as a ghost, and he barely fidgets. I'll catch him staring at the ceiling sometimes, a determined frown or a perfectly blank expression adorning his features. I don't think Dad knows. I've only noticed it on occasion, when I can't sleep myself and just glance around hoping for a silent distraction.

It's eerie, you know? Seeing someone so young with such serious expressions on their face. It makes me worried about him. It took him nearly a month to make any friends when he transferred to the local elementary, and from what I've heard it's more like they forced him to befriend them. It took a long time for him to learn how to interact with other kids less like a platypus in a field of puppies, and more like a normal human child.

He's always so serious, except for when he's asleep. Sometimes he's relaxed, soft and carefree. He never rolls about in bed though, which is unusual apparently. Dad says I would manage to take up a whole adult sized bed when I was his age, just stretching and flopping around in my sleep. Conan will lie there still, only his soft and even breathing indicating his existence. When he's awake at night, he doesn't move at all and his breathing is always hushed, as though he's expecting someone to creep up on him if he so much as breathes normally.

Sometimes I'll move myself so I'm facing him, and he'll turn his head to look at me with surprise in his big childish eyes. Sometimes guilt and worry flash through his eyes, but he falls asleep a lot quicker and never has nightmares on those nights when he notices me awake as well. I fall asleep pretty fast too, so I guess it's good for the both of us.

Other nights though, he has nightmares. It's barely noticeable at first, then his breathing begins to speed up. Like he's been running for a while, and doesn't quite know if he can stop yet. Then, he'll begin rolling around, that was how I first noticed him having a nightmare. He never moves in his sleep so it was easy for me to realize something was wrong that night.

He twisted and turned, and was soon drenching his crumpled and tangled bedsheets with sweat. It was horrible. He wouldn't wake up no matter what I did to wake him. Then it got worse. He started mumbling terrified words. Little things, like names, or 'don't kill them' and sometimes alcohols. But when he said them in his sleepy but distinctively petrified grade schoolers voice, it broke me. He'll wake up then, after the worst of it has had me suppressing shivers to try and hold him to make him feel better. He'll have a wide eyed, shocked look on his face.

I was next to him the first time, but he just looked at me with those eyes, and ran in the next room. I don't know why, and he clams up if I ask about it the next day, or changes the subject with that 'little kid act' of his. I may be convinced that he's not Shinichi now, but that doesn't mean I can't tell that he wouldn't act like that normally. He's gotten better at acting now, but it's still painfully obvious.

I left him alone the second time, after trying to wake him up. He sat bolt upright in his bed, you could have practiced Pythagoras on him, and looked with unseeing eyes around the room, blank with fear. You could see the exact moment that Conan realised he was not in whatever horror-scape his mind had dreamed up. Relief would relax his features, and he would let himself fall back onto his pillow. Then, he would just look at the sheets, sigh, and resign himself to tidying them up. I offered to help once, and he just gave me this look. It's the same sort of look Shinichi would give me if I said something utterly hilarious about one of his deductions without realizing it. It just said, quite plainly, let me handle this.

Well, he's only seven. I can get him to trust me in everything else, so I suppose I'll just have to work at this. It's not healthy for a seven year old to be stumbling over bodies as he does, and it's definitely not healthy for him to be having nightmares like this. At least he'll accept a warm drink to calm him down after everything's been returned to exactly how it was.

Despite how eerily similar the two are- Shinichi and Conan, that is, I can't see them as the same person anymore. They're just so different, especially since ones a little child and the other an adult. The differences, when I do notice them, are startling. Shinichi is strong, he's always been strong. Never phased by anything that happens to him, just carrying on with purpose. Conan is like that sometimes, but most of the time he's just a kid, even if he IS a murder magnet of a kid.

 **A.N**

 **There we go. Ran rambling about Conan and Shinichi. Take it as you will, I hope you enjoyed it though.**

 **BCoH signing out.**


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